This game will be firmly set in Golarion, but use the 13th Age rules set.

The 13th Age SRD has all the 13th Age rules, but lacks a lot of the cool sidebars present in the actual book. 13th age is a d20 system, I'm quite fond of it. It's got smooth combat like 4e but lots of freefom and mechanics that integrate with and encourage roleplaying.

We'll be using the 28 point buy this time around. Please note that it works differently than Pathfinder's Point Buy.

Classes:

From the simplest character class to the most complex, the
classes go like so:
• The barbarian is designed for the player who wants to roll
dice and slay without worrying too much about the rules.
• Like the barbarian, the ranger relies on base attacks
augmented by class talents instead of a power list.
• The paladin also relies on a short list of class talents instead
of powers. Like the ranger, it can be slightly more complex if
you choose its more involved talents.
• The fighter is simple to play but asks you to make interesting
choices between flexible attacks before and during combat.
• The cleric is probably the easiest of the spellcasters. It
requires a touch of patience.
• The sorcerer is probably more complex than the cleric
because of variant spells and the option to cast spells for
double the effect in two rounds. Not a decision that new
players may feel comfortable with.
• The rogue can be more complex than other classes because
you are tracking whether or not you have momentum,
constantly disengaging, and trying to use your Sneak Attack
damage effectively.
• The bard has a variety of options that include battle cries,
spells, and songs. Figuring out how to use these options in
combat and during roleplaying is probably best for a confident
player.
• The wizard is the most complex class if you choose all the
options that allow improvisation and ad-libbing; without
those free-form talents, it’s no more difficult than the sorcerer

Icons:

This time we'll be using Shattered Star Icons, in addition they are grouped into Heroic, Ambiguous, and Villainous. They are distributed as they are to help point the story in the right direction, but ultimately where we go is up to you.

•“I am a deathless pirate whose soul is trapped in a
gem controlled by the Blue dragon.”
• “I am one of a couple dozen surviving members of
the Order of the Koru, a group of rangers who move
through the Empire on or beside the Koru behemoths.”
• “I am the bastard son of the Emperor.”
• “I am the oldest elf in the world.”
• “I cut off my own arm to show how tough I am.”
• “I hear pain as music. Sweet, sweet music.”
• “A paladin of the Crusader cut off my arm where I
was holding a demon-bow . . . and in doing so, cut all
the evil out of me, so that I am now a paragon of the
path of the Great Gold Wyrm.”
• “I am a dwarf who was born covered in scales from
the egg of a dragon.”
• “I am a former cultist.”
• “I am the reincarnation of an ancient icon. I don’t
know which one yet.”
• “I am the three-time winner of the dwarven drinking
championships.”
• “I was the rudest lady-in-waiting of the Imperial Court.”

Campaign Level-Up Variant: the 10 6-session Campaign:

In this quick campaign, the players start at 1st level and gain one level each session. Each session will represent 1 book of the AP.

Each session includes two battles. These are double-strength battles because there are only two of them. A session will also include a small number of other features: encounters with NPCs, places to explore, traps, hazards, challenges, etc.

Reduce the PCs’ recoveries to three per session.

The characters get a level’s worth of treasure spread out among one session’s encounters. They get a full heal-up and a level-up at the end of each session.

We will be Fast forwarding through the administrative stuff, like travel, and race to the action—important NPCs, exotic places to explore, and high-powered battles.

As always, if you have any questions, comments or concerns feel free to ask.

Once we get a little closer we'll be adding extra tables of adventures that need them and removing the tables we don't, so remember to sign up early to get the tables that you want. Also if there are adventures you want to see that we don't have, just let us know and we'll do our best to make them happen.

He’s been doing a great job organizing Endgame, promoting events on the Facebook group, organizing mini-cons, updating the BAPS handouts, being better prepared than I am, having incredible patience with both new and old players and generally being an awesome human being.

Hey everybody, I had a thought today regarding the various talks about a new retirement arc and thought I would share it...

Instead of a new level 12 3-5 part retirement arc adding a new tier 9-13 (9-10/12-13).

This has the advantage of being much easier to schedule. Currently Eyes of the Ten requires 4-6 players who are at exactly 33xp and can commit to 5+ sessions of game play.

I do think some of the oddity is it's appeal though. It's an awesome story, it's epic in a way that's hard to do in PFS's normal episodic play. It reveals huge secrets regarding the Pathfinder Society.

Secrets that I'm proud of our community for largely being able to hold on to.

What are we up to with tables played for Eyes of the Ten though, 200? That's like 2% of the active PFS player base.

Maybe it's worth writing awesome stuff for that 2%. They are the most dedicated players/GMs.

Those of you clamoring for a new retirement arc, is it to experience another awesome story like Eyes of the Ten, a desire for more higher level play? Attachment to your characters?

I guess I'm asking if this idea would scratch the same itch?
Thanks for taking the time to read, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts as well.

First of all, I am pleased to Announce Josh McIllwain as the Bay Area's first Adventure Card Game Venture Lieutenant. We couldn't have a finer soul at the sails.

Secondly, I am pleased to announce PACG organized play at 2 BAPS locations, with more coming soon.

#1 Josh McIllwain @ Crazy Squirrel Games in Fresno will be hosting games on Monday nights at 6pm

#3 Pirate Captain Rob @ Endgame in Oakland will be hosting games on Monday nights at 5pm

Expect Warhorn pre-registration to be available "soon"™. Until then feel free to drop by.

Note that playing Organized Play for the Adventure Card game requires each player to have their own class deck. (I'll have my personal stash available to lend out to players for their first visit to EndGame) They retail for about $20 and come with 4 new characters and all the cards they need.

Death and Prepared Spell Retention: If a spellcaster dies, all prepared spells stored in his mind are wiped away. Potent magic (such as raise dead, resurrection, or true resurrection) can recover the lost energy when it recovers the character.

Raise Dead: A character who died with spells prepared has a 50% chance of losing any given spell upon being raised.

Breath of life has no such overriding clause.

Does this mean that prepared spell casters who are raised from the dead by breath of life lose all memorized spells?

Hi everybody, currently the Additional Resources has multiple copies of the same item/spell/etc listed as legal from different sources.

The problem is that sometimes they don't have the same rules. To really confuse things, sometimes they are considered independent (Dueling), while other times they are not (Brass Knuckles)

While this thread won't fix any short term problems regarding which is legal, it will allow the PFS staff to eventually fix additional resources.

Please don't let this thead bog down into arguments over what is what, but instead just provide a list of the problems. The book source is absolutely necessary, and page number is probably helpful as well.

So, I just got my email back from GenCon about the Paths We Choose and I noticed it mentioned

"contributes directly to the ongoing storylines of the Andoran, Cheliax, Osirion, Qadira, Sczarni, and Taldor factions.

Also with a note that it plays differently based on the factions present at the table.

Leading me to believe we'll see the end of the Silver Crusade, which makes sense since our WorldWound campaign is over and

Wrath of the Righteous Spoilers:

The World Wound gets closed.

The other missing faction is the Grand Lodge. I wonder if they'll still be around but perhaps more as the no-secret society option rather that what they currently are. Leaving it a good option for pregens and players who wish to "opt-out" of the faction system.

This game will not be set in Golarion, but set in The Dragon Empires of 13th Age.

Greetings! In an effort to play more 13th age and get another game in for the PFS Game day, I've decided to run part 1 of Reign of Winter in Campaign Mode. In this case having previously play the AP will not be problematic and I'll be using it as a loose guide to pull resources from.

The choices on where to go and what to do lies with you, the players.

Previous experience with 13th Age is not necessary, but a willingness to learn is.

We'll be having fun and not taking ourselves too seriously so stats will be done by the "Roll ’em" method.:

Roll 4d6 for each of the six ability scores (Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma). Drop the low die in each roll. Put the scores into any order to best fit the character you want to play.

I am also happy to create the basic mechanics behind the character you want allowing you to focus on all the awesome parts.

Scene 1: During (Dark) Ma’rakah, the V’rek dominion’s largest Western city and home to their most dangerous munitions factory is obliterated while Ja'Mek is visiting to oversee construction of a new doomsday weapon, when a terrorist cell loses control of a weather spell and repeated lightning bolts rain down on the city.

Why does Ja'Mek not flee Ma’rakah once things start going wrong, even though he knows he'll be killed?

Lightning and fires rage throughout Ma’rakah, clearly out of control. Ja'Mek and his Crimson Executioners have just stopped the terrorists and must decide what to do next. Ja'Mek doesn't yet know city is going to be destroyed even though we do, and he will by the end of the scene.

A murderer stalks the streets of Magnimar! The guards are baffled, people huddle in their homes, and whispers spread of death delivered on dark wings.

Desperate for aid, the city watch turns to bold adventurers, revealing more of the murders’ gruesome details and bringing the heroes in on a daring plan to catch the killer — a plot that makes them a tempting target for the maniac’s bloody knife.

This dangerous ploy sets the heroes on a path fraught with savage creatures, decades-old secrets, and the dark desires of an immortal evil that seeks to pervert a forgotten house of worship.

Will they be able to put an end to the slaughter? Or will all of Magnimar drown in the rising tide of blood?

Greetings.
For those of you who don't know, Dawn of the Scarlet Sun is Paizo's 2013 Free RPG day module. It is about the length of a PFS scenario and grants 1xp, 1PP and commensurate gold.

Please note, that this is not a 1 post a day game, the pace will be considerably quicker than that. (My last pbp took ~14 days averaging 3 posts/day/person including weekends, I would like to keep a similar pace for this one)

What I expect from you:

You should have a PFS character level 4-6 with a character sheet that's easy for me to access. Additionally some basic stats should be available at a glance via clever use of profiles. I can help you get the formatting right. I understand that real life happens but I would very much appreciate the courtesy of a quick note if you're going to be unavailable. (I will let you know when I'm busy)

What you should expect from me:

I am currently seeking employment so i have lots of free time during the day to post multiple times. I will be gone some evenings but will keep you informed as to my schedule.
I am an experienced GM however this is my first time GMing this particular adventure. No matter how much time I waste staring at rulebooks, I will still make mistakes. If you do notice anything you think is wrong or even questionable please feel free to bring it up in discussion. I love learning new things.

I will do my best to keep the game moving quickly and to be as fun as possible. I will not softball the challenges, nor will I increase their difficulty, be prepared to live or die by your own skill and the roll of the dice.

As a note there we some complaints about difficulty when the Module was first released so I recommend against playing a pregen.

GameDay:

This game is part of the Official Pathfinder Society PbP Game Day. For more information please visit: http://PbPGameday.com
Please note that because of the Gameday rules the game will not start until April 5th.

An ancient line of dragon-kings dies out as magic fades from the realm...

These are all examples of Microscope games.

In Microscope you build an epic history as you play, but you don't play the history from start to finish, marching along in chronological order. Instead, you build your history from the outside in. You start off knowing the big picture, the grand scheme of what happens, then you dive in and explore what happened in between, the how and why that shaped events.

You are free to jump backwards or forwards, zooming in or out to look at whatever you want, defying limits of time and space. Want to leap a thousand years into the future and see how an institution shaped society? Want to jump back to the childhood of the king you just saw assassinated and find out what made him such a hated ruler? That's normal in Microscope.

You have vast creative authority. You can make whole empires rise and fall at will. Dream up a utopia or destroy one with nuclear fire. You have that power, but remember you're not alone: every else at the table can do it too.

You create independently, but not in isolation. Each facet you add to history builds on what other players built before you. You expand on their ideas and the expand on yours. History might not turn out the way you expected. Be prepared to think on your feet.

When you zoom all the way in to a particular moment in time, all the players share the stage and role-play together to find out something we want to learn about the history. Did the crew of the Icarus know the aliens were in Titan? Did the rebels really fake the government crackdown? Do the knights remember the original meaning of their ritual vows? We role-play and see.

The more you play, the more your once simple summary becomes a detailed tapestry, full of meaning and surprises. History snowballs.

Question: Can a weapon with the dueling property be used to perform a dirty trick maneuver?

First, to help dispel any confusion, I am talking about the Dueling property from the Pathfinder Society Field Guide.

Dueling:

A dueling weapon bears magical enhancements that makes it particularly effective at performing certain combat maneuvers. When a dueling weapon is used to perform a combat maneuver that utilizes the weapon only (see below), it grants a luck bonus equal to twice its enhancement bonus on the CMB check made to carry out the maneuver. The dueling weapon also grants this same luck bonus to the wielder’s CMD score against these types of combat maneuvers. These combat maneuvers include disarm and trip maneuvers, but not bull rush, grapple, or overrun maneuvers. If you’re using the additional combat maneuvers in the Advanced Player’s Guide, this also includes any dirty trick maneuvers that utilize the weapon, as well as reposition combat maneuvers, but not drag or steal combat maneuvers. Note that this luck bonus stacks with the weapon’s enhancement bonus, which in and of itself adds to CMB checks normally.

According to the FAQ: Disarm, sunder, and trip are normally the only kinds of combat maneuvers in which you’re actually using a weapon to perform the maneuver.

Meaning as per the FAQ there's no way to get the dueling weapon bonus on dirty tricks...

Aside:

There is the Net Trickery feat which allows one to make dirty tricks with a net, even though net adept feat lets you treat nets as melee weapons they are still not eligible for melee enhancements, such as dueling.

So, I picked up the Jade Regent AP a while back and have been working on a conversion to 13th Age (d20 game by Jonathan Tweet/Rob Heinsoo).

We'll be using the 13th Age campaign variant where you play 1 session at each level, with all the background and side stuff described at the beginning of each session. 13th Age only goes 10 levels (each 13th age level is about the equivalent of 2 pathfinder levels powerwise)

I'm running this for a table of non PFS players, although I've convinced them to take PFS #s and chronicles in case they ever decide to play.

We'll be going through the whole story but I wanted to double check before I reported all 6 AP sessions. I think the rules say it's fine but

I'm a little concerned with reporting what's supposed to be ~18 sessions when I'm only really running 10. I don't think its against the rules but it seems against the intent to me.

Does anybody have any thoughts? Maybe only report the first 3, stop worrying about it and be thankful I've got 4 awesome players that might decide to get into PFS?

Thanks in advance for any feedback.

10 Session Campaign:

In this quick campaign, the players start at 1st level and gain one level each session. The campaign concludes on the 10th session in a climactic confrontation with the PCs’ personal enemies.

Each session includes two battles. These are double-strength battles because there are only two of them. A session will alsoinclude a small number of other features: encounters with NPCs, places to explore, traps, hazards, challenges, etc. In general, give the party about two opportunities a session to use background skills or icon relationships to advance their goals within the campaign.

...
You’ve only got ten sessions for them to see the world, so don’t have them stay in one place. You can make a checklist of locations on the map you want the campaign to go. At the start of each session, summarize what has happened in the days, weeks, or even months since the last session. Fast forward through the administrative stuff, like travel, and race to the action—important NPCs, exotic places to explore, and high-powered battles.

Seasons 0/1 we had 28 scenarios.
Seasons 2-4 we had 26 scenarios + 2 to 4 specials (counting 1st steps)
Season 5 it looks like we're going to have 25 scenarios + 2 specials. A new low in PFS scenarios.

I think the quality is great and has gone way up from where we started but I'm worried about the current downward trend in scenarios produced.

Rather than take any glory away from the top 32, I thought I'd start my own thread.

Hi everybody, my name is Robert Hetherington and I'm one of the alternates for this year's RPGSS.

I recently completed my BS in Business Economics from Iowa state and at the end of January will be returning to my true home of Berkeley, CA to seek gainful employment.

I got into Pathfinder through Pathfinder Society which accounts for almost all of my experience with the Pathfinder RPG. I've also run the first 3 books of Kingmaker and am in a couple AP pbps, but other than that it's all PFS all the time.

I don't have the text handy (I'm on the wrong computer) but my item was the Wardstone Bracers. In retrospect I feel like I could have done a better job with the description and am redoubling my monster efforts.

(If somebody has the text of the item handy, feel free to post)

Thank you all and special congratulations to Robert Brookes for already finding a table at the guildhall.

Song of Surrender (Su)
A buccaneer of 4th level or higher can use his performance to encourage an enemy to surrender. To be affected, an enemy must be within 30 feet and be able to see and hear the buccaneer’s performance.
An affected enemy feels the irresistible urge to drop any held weapons and fall prone. This effect lasts for 1 round—essentially, the affected enemy takes no actions on its next turn other than to lie prone, although it is not considered flat-footed or helpless. A Will saving throw (DC 10 + 1/2 the buccaneer’s level + the buccaneer’s Charisma modifier) negates the effect.

Lingering Performace
Benefit: The bonuses and penalties from your bardic performance continue for 2 rounds after you cease performing. Any other requirement, such as range or specific conditions, must still be met for the effect to continue. If you begin a new bardic performance during this time, the effects of the previous performance immediately cease.

Anybody got an answer for this? If not could you at least hit the FAQ button for me.